


Red

by emmals16



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Blood, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt, I basically explored the stages of grief and different types of grief, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26420551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmals16/pseuds/emmals16
Summary: The lock clicks.There’s no flashing lights inside the room, but all Raph can see is red.
Relationships: Donatello & Leonardo & Michelangelo & Raphael (TMNT), Leonardo & Raphael (TMNT)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> (Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to to TMNT other than this story)

**The alarms are blaring before Raph even gets through the door. The moans of the man he’s left behind on the ground slowly grow silent as he finds something to block the path behind him. Red lights flash on and off in the hallway, strobing in a way that makes Raph’s eyes grow blurry, but he shakes the feeling away.**

**“Third floor…” he knows Donnie should have been the one to do this, damnit. Donnie had the entire place memorized already. He studied the damn building as soon as they figured out which one it was they were going to have to infiltrate, “Where’s the goddamn staircase?”**

**A low yellow light shimmers out through underneath a door with an ‘exit’ sign above it. Raph immediately charges through, taking the stairs up two at a time. Up above him, he already hears the thundering footsteps charging down towards him. The shouts and the** **_clunking_ ** **of weapons being loaded just adds fuel to Raph’s fire. As soon as he sees the ‘3’ on the wall beside another set of doors, he takes a mad lunge at them. The blast of gun fire explodes behind him, but by then he’s already running off down the hallway.**

 **Donnie’s voice echoes in his head,** **_“It’ll be on the third floor. There will be a sign that says ‘pediatrics’. It’ll be there. It’s an abandoned hospital so there’s no actual meaning behind that.”_ **

**Some dark part of Raph’s brain murmurs how Leo’s only almost sixteen so it’s not too weird that they’d put him there.**

**Master Splinter is another story, though.**

**His eyes light up when a giant sticker on the wall reads ‘PEDIATRICS’ like a sort of beacon at the end of the hallway. Behind him as the stairs, he can hear men trying to arrange where they’re going to fan out to. Raph got away in time, it seems.**

**He breathes a sigh, suddenly slinking down to a crouch. A small set of doors divides the pediatric waiting rooms and offices from the rest of the hospital. Raph pushes them open.**

**It takes him a whole five minutes to realize there are an absolute number of 0 guards between him and where Donnie predicted they’d have their sick little project set up.**

**Room 346 sits at the end of a long corridor. The red lights flash over him as he reaches for the locked handle. Twisting the key he had ripped from the neck of the scientist he had found trying to run away as soon as Raph’s presence was noticed.**

**The lock clicks.**

**There’s no flashing lights inside the room, but all Raph can see is red.**

**~~~**

They had run away. 

Evacuated the whole damn building. The hospital once again stood abandoned. 

Raph’s teeth clench. He can practically feel cracks spreading across them at the pressure. 

A bunch of damn cowards. That’s all they are. 

As soon as they realized that they’d been breached and their research destroyed— as soon as they realized that their records had been dug through in a frenzy until the list with all the assholes’ names who were working on the project was found, they’d packed up shop and moved somewhere else. 

They didn’t know _who_ had broken in. Donnie had made sure that _everything_ that hinted at their existence was destroyed once he had met Raph on the 3rd floor. 

He hadn't wanted Donnie to see that...was thankful Mikey didn’t have to. Not the room, anyway. Not much could have been hidden. 

Instead of Donnie using the more tactful method of hacking their systems and shutting everything down, in his sudden and overpowering emotions, he had taken his bo staff and smashed the computers and every system until there was only scraps and pieces of plastic. 

The fire was Raph’s idea. 

Even after that, the hospital still stood. Like it was mocking them. 

**~~~**

_“My sons, Leonardo and I are heading above to get supplies. We will be back by dawn.”_

_“Huh? I thought April and Casey were bringing us groceries?”_

_“No, Mikey,” Donnie’s voice sounded from his lab. He didn’t even spare a glance their way as he said, “April and Casey are out of town. They won’t be back for a few weeks.”_

_“Do ya ever pay attention, you numbskull?”_

_“Nope.”_

_Leonardo smiled as Master Splinter led the way to the exit, “See you soon, my sons.”_

_And Leo simply waved, “Don’t get into too much trouble! I don’t want to come back to find that you’ve all killed each other!”_

_“You’re no fun, Leo!” Raph had called back, not sparing another glance to his older brother._

_“Sorry, I forgot,” Leo hummed, his voice now growing further away, “Someone like you_ thrives _off of violence.”_

_Raph had smiled._

**~~~**

**“Guys?”**

**Mikey’s voice was small, but it carried across the living room easily enough. Complete and utter silence would allow for that possibility in any circumstance.**

**Donnie’s the first to react, pulling his face out of the palms of his hands, “Yeah, Mikey” What’s wrong?”**

**Raph watches from his slouched position on the sofa. He doesn’t spend too much time noticing the red tint of Donnie’s eyes or the shimmer of the skin on his cheeks. He doesn’t notice the timid stance Mikey has as he stands in front of his two older brothers. Or how his hands keep wringing together. Or how the youngest’s eyes have dark circles underneath them.**

**He doesn’t mention any of it.**

**Mikey bites his lip, “Leo won’t let me into his room. I made food for him, but…”**

**Raph spares a glance towards Donnie who lets out a heavy sigh, closing his weary eyes once again, “Okay. I’ll be there in just a second, Mikey.”**

**Mikey nods once, slinking away with as little sound as possible.**

**Donnie sniffs once, clearing his throat direction after. He wipes at his face and stands. Raph can feel his younger brother eye him as he goes after Mikey towards Leo’s room.**

**Raph does little more than stare at the same point he’s been staring at since he was finally allowed to sit after hours of nothing but torment.**

**~~~**

“I know you can find him, Donnie,” Raph’s voice holds more venom that he intended, but he doesn’t bother reeling it in, “Just do your thing and find the motherfucker for me, would you?”

Donnie actually growls. Full out _growls_ and Raph would have laughed under any other circumstance. He doesn’t though, he just slams the crumpled paper with names upon names scrawled on it in print and signatures onto Donnie’s desk and reels back. Donnie only swivels in his chair and stares at Raph for a solid 10 seconds before speaking, “Do you honestly think this is what you should be doing _now_?”

“What the Hell else is there to do?”

Raph’s tired of sitting around. 

Of staring at the point in the distance his eyes alway end up tracking over to. Just _staring_ at it for hours and _hours_ as he listens to muffled sobbing and screams that echo through their home. He’s tired of watching Donnie rip himself from busying himself with mundane projects that Raph _knows_ he isn’t _actually_ focusing on to go running for their older brother’s room. He’s tired of always being called because they find Leo’s door locked. 

He’s tired. 

“You could help Mikey, how about that?”

Donnie’s eyes are cold when he says it. And Raph can tell by the hunched posture of his immediately younger brother that this isn’t turning into some sort of mindless squabble. Raph feels some small piece of his anger fall away. 

“Help him with what?” Raph has a tint of laughter to his voice, “Cooking and cleaning? Jesus, Donnie. We have bigger things to—”

“Have you even spoken to Leo?”

That throws Raph off his game. Raph’s cynical smile melts away and he glares daggers at his brother, “What?”

“Leo _needs_ you here, Raph,” Donnie says, crossing his arms and rising from his chair, “Hell, we all need you here to lead us until Leo can get back on his feet again.”

“I don’t know how to do that, Donnie!”

Donnie’s eyes flash something. The brown look almost...sympathetic. And it seems too much like pity for Raph to actually take comfort in Donnie’s empathetic nature. 

Donnie takes a shaky breath, “Mikey’s trying to get Leo to speak to us. Leo’s _drowning_ , Raph and he won’t tell us what happened there or _anything_.”  
“We already know what happened there.”

Donnie’s face crumples and Raph feels the small voice in his head that sounds remarkably like Leo informing him that he epically fucked up. 

“Yeah,” tears slide down Donnie’s cheeks in small beads and Raph just _stares_ like he always does, “Yeah we do. But Leo doesn’t know we do and— and, the _last_ thing he should be doing is keeping everything just...just tucked away, Raphie!”

Raph’s mouth parts like he’s going to say something but...there’s nothing he can think of to say in all honesty. 

“Mikey can’t get him to speak and— and _I_ can’t even get him to look at me,” A gravely tone comes to Donnie’s voice, “And you’re the _only_ one who hasn’t spoken to him.”

Raph knows why. Somewhere deep down he knows why he hasn’t.

Somewhere closer to the surface, there’s something preventing him from actually putting it into words. 

Donnie’s expression practically explodes, voice turning to some type of roar that would have even combatted Leo’s most stern lectures, “We’re trying to help our big brother, and you want to go off to God knows where, to get some revenge?”

“It’s what they deserve.”

“Yes,” Donnie says strongly, nodding, “It is, but the _last_ thing _any_ of us need is another family member out there with these people. Thinking that you’re getting killed or worse. Especially Leo.”

Raph glances down at the sheet of names he had slammed onto Donnie’s desk. The edges of it are already crumbling from how many times Raph has shoved the think into one of his little packs on his belt. How many times he’s looked at it in less than ideal conditions. 

How long had already passed? How long had they been stuck like this?

Raph frowns at the ground for a long second, “Whether you help me find them or not...I’m doing this.”

Donnie gives a halfhearted glare that just doesn’t quite land. Somewhere behind Raphael, he can feel another pair of eyes on the back of his head and suddenly he feels like he’s under a magnifying glass. Being picked apart with every change of his demeanor. 

Donnie sniffs once, gaze turning soft, “Then I won’t stop you.”

~~~

**Splinter wasn’t buried.**

**They had left him there, form fixed so he could have arguably been sleeping.**

**The fire had been set for that very reason.**

**It just had the added benefit of making the building’s occupants evacuate, and having all the work they’d spent tireless hours on being turned into ash that’d be forgotten after a few months.**

**Hell, Raph thinks, maybe they got lucky and took a few people down, too.**

**~~~**

Donnie was serious when he told Raph he wouldn’t help him. Raph never asked him again, but every time Raph came back worse for wear, dripping with rain or sewer water or blood— his or someone else's, it began to blur and Donnie never asked— Donnie would just watch him stumble down the hall to his room. 

One time Donnie informed him of what he had read about the organization that took Leo and Splinter. Raph had felt the desire to just walk away. He didn’t care what the psychopaths there had wanted. It wouldn’t change anything. 

“A cancer research facility,” Donnie had grumbled, eyes downcast, “To study mutations and how to reverse them...I guess that—”

Raph growled and crossed his arms aggressively, but Donnie only paused for a moment. He continues after seemingly drawing some courage with a small voice, “I guess that trying to reverse the mutation for Master Splinter... _backfired_.” 

When he finally got a lead, and said lead gave him the information for the head honcho of the operation _finally_ — _finally..._ he had killed him. The man had panicked. He was a security guard that was part of the project for only a week for the new location but he had enough training to trip Raph when he had the opportunity. 

Raph was too caught up with having new information that he didn’t even realize what he’d done until it was over. 

He hadn't even felt remorse towards his actions. 

Just imagined the blood he had seen in that room— that _cell_ — and felt some sort of inkling of peace. 

It faded as soon as he had arrived home, two pairs of blue eyes greeted him. Mikey was there, sitting on the floor in front of the other form who was hunched over on the couch. The skin stretched over his cheek bones and the haunted glint in his eye. 

That wasn’t Leo. 

He had turned tail and ran. 

~~~

_“Sorry, I forgot. Someone like you thrives off of violence.”_

_~~~_

**“Mmm…”**

**Raph jerked awake from where he was hunched over. It took him only a split second to realize that he was in a desk chair, Leo’s bed set up in front of him with the older turtle in it. It took him another second to realize that there were two eyes peeking out from blankets.**

**Raph would normally smile. He had done this enough times with every member of his family to know that smiling was the first step to basically saying, “Hey, everything’s alright. You’re okay.”**

**But this was the first time Leo had woken up since...** **_then_ ** **and it definitely wasn’t alright and** **_he_ ** **definitely wasn’t fine so why the Hell would he smile? Besides the glaze that sat atop Leo’s eyes, a fog that filled his mind and twisted what he was seeing— Raph doubted that anything he said would even register anyways.**

**Leo’s voice is slurred and small when he speaks and Raph feels a chill race up his spine at the sound of it. He doesn’t catch what is said, however, so Raph inhales lethargically and asks, “Wha’ was that?”**

**Leo licks his lips, blinking slowly, “M’sorry…”**

**Raph’s sharp expression could curdle blood.**

**“F’r...F’give m’...”**

**Leo’s words continue in a mindless drone that Raph’s words couldn’t hope to comfort to silence. So he forces himself to sit there and listen. Listen to the words he won’t ever want to listen to again.**

**Raph refused to return to Leo’s room after that. No amount of Mikey or Donnie’s questions would convince Raph to explain further.**

**~~~**

Two months and four days after finding Leo and Master Splinter, Leo finally looks Donnie in the eye and speaks. 

Two months and five days after that terrible day...Raph finds the person in charge. 

Interrogations and threats. Techniques that he knows Master Splinter would not have ever dreamed of him using, but Master Splinter was dead and nothing he thought before mattered anymore. 

Not really. 

Not when this has been their family's reality for a quarter of a year. An entire Hell. 

It was when he was getting ready— sharpening his sai and making sure his T-Phone was charged that he realizes where his gaze drifts to when he allows his mind to pause. When he found himself trapped to the couch on that first night and the week following and just staring off into some random space. 

They were the doors to Splinter’s room. 

The same doors that Donnie and Mikey refused to look at for fear of remembering. 

Raph found himself drawn to looking to it.

He understands all very suddenly, that he hasn't been staring at _Splinter’s_ doors. He hasn’t been sitting there hour after hour looking at the room that would no longer be occupied by their father, but the room that was _supposed_ to be occupied by Leo now. 

They’d known for forever. Splinter’s time was coming. And when it did, Leo was supposed to take the reins gracefully. He was supposed to move into that room and he was supposed to make the decisions for the family. He wasn’t supposed to bow under his grief and Raph knows that Leo accepted that responsibility long before Raph even thought of the possibility of Splinter dying from age. 

But _God_ , this wasn’t age. Splinter didn’t die from frailty or with peace. 

And Leo got to watch the whole damn ordeal. 

Raph’s grief isn’t stemmed directly to Splinter, like Mikey and Donnie’s is. His grief is tethered to what else was lost with their father’s life. 

How can Leo move into that room...how can he _sleep_ anywhere just... _knowing_ that the responsibility he was taking would seem too much like he was pushing away the tragedy of the whole thing. 

As the screams echo throughout the lair once again and Mikey’s gasp rings out from the kitchen, Raph immediately knows why’s been doing nothing but wracking his brain while staring at those doors. 

Because he knows Leo _can’t_ do any of that. Not now. 

He’s been looking to them almost pleadingly...hoping to see Leo walking out of them. Showing him and his two younger brothers that they still had someone to look to for guidance. Guidance that he had always thrown away before.

And without that guidance, Raph is all so suddenly thrown into the position he never wanted. Never truly. 

The look Mikey gives him when he comes home covered in blood and the disapproving one Donnie throws his way when he leaves as dusk. They’re from the same thing. 

He’s who they’re looking to.

And he’s failing. 

Raph leaves without a word to his family.

~~~

 **When April calls once she and Casey have gotten back from their trip, it becomes** **_very_ ** **clear that she doesn’t know what to say.**

 **The mumbled apologies, as though it’s her fault or they can suddenly** **_magically_ ** **solve everything, causes Raph to just lash out.**

**Donnie has to make a new phone. The other one lies in pieces on the ground.**

**~~~**

Raph’s feet slap against the ground. Rain sprinkling around him, stabbing his frozen skin but he pushes forward. 

The deep red jacket of his target sprints forward. His boots skid across the ground, slipping on the nearly frozen water flooding the alleyway. Raph stays surefooted. He throws one of his knives. No missing; he can't afford to. A direct hit to the man’s back. 

The guy had spouted some shit about him doing the project for his own kid or something. At some point, Raph stopped listening. He didn’t care. He just...couldn’t allow himself to feel _empathy_ for something like that at this point. Not with this man. 

The idiot stumbles, smacking into the brick wall but he tries to keep going despite the blood now sprinkling the ground behind him. Raph catches him before he can continue too much, grabbing him by his throat and throwing him to the wall. 

Raph allows his body to work without preamble as he brings his sai’s blade out and towards the man’s quivering form. 

The man cries out as the blade plunges into his bicep, “I’m sorry! Please!”

Raph growls, “Seriously? You know what you did and—”

“Forgive me!”

Raph feels ice in his blood, his eyes grow wide and his hand loosens from the man’s throat ever so slightly. 

_‘M’sorry…’_

_‘F’r...F’give m’...’_

“Please!”

Raph’s grip tightens ever so slightly and the man squeaks, “Please don’t do it! Please! I have a family!

_‘L’ve him alone...pl’se,_

_‘D’nt do it.”_

The man's eyes are wide, glossy with fear and lack of oxygen. Raph just stares for a moment. Just staring. Always just staring…

_At those doors._

_Master Splinter’s doors._

_Leo’s doors._

_Pray they’ll never be yours…_

_“Sorry, I forgot. Someone like you thrives off of violence.”_

Raph’s hand falls away, grip around the man’s throat going slack. 

~~~

Home is warm...something that it hasn't been for months by now. He wonders suddenly if it was him who was cold, and not the lair around him. 

He steps into the lair, puddles being left behind in his wake. He’s sure that his skin has a blue tint to it by now but he just craves to hobble off to his room and collapse into his bed. Maybe not rise for a few weeks. That’d be nice. That’d be—

There’s three people crowding the living room when Raph comes in. Three green heads. All of them look to him and it takes Raph a moment to realize that he’s covered in blood. Not as much as he _would_ have been, but he isn’t sure if it would be a comfort to tell his brothers that it isn’t all his at this point. 

Mikey is the first to stand. A light in his eyes that has been vacant for the past months shimmering and Raph feels some of the weight on his heart lift. 

“Dude, are you okay?”

Raph hesitates before nodding, mumbling a quiet, “It’s not mine.”

When he meets Donnie’s eyes, he can tell that the genius takes only a moment to read Raph’s body language and realize that Raph…

Raph didn’t. He couldn’t. Not like that. Not with those voices ringing in his head. 

Donnie’s eyes close, a quirk to his eyebrow that says unbelievable relief and Raph feels like he should be proud that he did something that his _younger brother_ is proud of, but he doesn’t. He looks to the floor, lost in his own mind. 

He flinches when a soft touch traces the broken skin on Raph’s cheek. The wound he’d received when he finally let the man go and had let his guard down. 

His eyes flick up and he doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but it isn’t what he sees. 

Leo stands there, shadows under his eyes that dims the blue and skeletal facial features from the months he refused to eat. Those months that Raph didn't help. Did nothing and just stared at those damn doors. 

And thought of what he would have done if Leo had been killed as well. Not paying attention once he realized Leo hadn't been killed. 

Leo’s hand cups the side of Raph’s face, an expression so tender that Raph feels the dam he had forged around his heart in the midst of grief and fear start to crumble away. Donnie must have told Leo what he was up to...

As soon as Raph feels his lip tremble the slightest bit, Leo is pulling him into his chest. Weak arms wrap around him, but Raph wouldn't dream about breaking away. 

“It’s okay,” the voice he hadn't realized he'd missed hearing says into Raph’s ear, and he feels two more pairs of arms wrap themselves around him.

Raph shakes his head, gripping the rough edges of Leo’s shell and chokes out a miserable, “No it isn’t.”

Leo’s voice doesn’t return until Raph notices the chorus of sniffles and hitches in breath around him, none coming from Leo himself, but he feels a small patch of moisture where Leo’s head rests on his shoulder. 

“Yeah…it really isn't,” Leo agrees, and Raph looks to those damn paper doors and can swear that he sees them open slightly, the red patterns on them seeming warm and inviting, “But it will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a little drabble with me messing with how people grieve differently depending on their place in a family network and their personality.  
> I also may have been feeling BIG SAD.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
